Describe Your Magic System in a Few Sentences

I've already explained the basics of my magic system, but I haven't elaborated on the different "schools" of magic. These all work by channeling magicl energy into the form the user wishes, but each has a different way of doing it, which produces different results.

• Wizards: Common name for the "typical" mage, who draws in magicl energy and uses it to power his spells. Wizards can launch blasts of fire, create shields of solid magical energy, temporarily suspend gravity in the are and other things like that. Wizards are often divided into further subgroups depending on the kinds of spells the specialise in (red wizards like fire spells, white wizards use light spells etc.).
• Animators: also known as necromancers (not entirely accurate, as they can animate things other than dead bodies as well), these mages channel magic energy into lifeless things to grant them life. Animators most commonly make use of dead bodies since they have the necessary articulation to let them move around and are easier to animate than something that has never been alive (since the body was once alive, returning it to somethign resembling life is easier than giving life to a completely lifess object). Fresh bodies are especially easy to raise since they have all the muscles necessar for movement in place. Some animators prefer to use golems and automatons instead. Particularly skilled ones are even able to controll a still living person against their will.
• Enchanters: A very important school of mages, enchanters specialise in imbuing objects with magical power, creating things like orbs that glow in the dark to provide light, blades covered with magical fire or even airships kept aloft by anti-gravity enchantments.
• Battlemages: An unusal combination of martial arts and magic, this school focuses on channeling magical energy through ones body. Battlemages use magic to boost their strenght and durability, and to imbue their fists with magical power (essentially they cast spells by punching people). Different from other schools, they act more like warrior monks than traditional wizards, spending their time meditating and trainign their abilities through sparring matches. Powerful battlemages are very dangrous in combat as they can boost their abilities to superhuman levels.
• Technomages: Technically not a school of its own, but a combination of Animation and Enchantment, technomagic focuses on combining magic and technology. They create all kinds of magically powered and enchanted machines. Unlike contructs created by animators, which require the mage to channel power into them to keep them functioning, the creations of technomages usually have a magical power source that allows them to function without direct involvement from the mage (aside from recharging the power source with more magic when it runs out). Technomages are very rare as not many people can master two schools of magic at once, but they are highly sough after for their talents.
• Healers: Healers can be considered a subset of wizards that use their power to, well, heal people. They can use magic to boost natural healing processes, disinfect wounds etc.

Skip this.

edited 26th Jan '13 7:58:38 AM by Eagal

How interesting. Here's my (revised and constantly evolving) version. Mind you, this is going to be one hell of a wall o' text. (Which kinda defies the very title of the discussion, but since everybody did it anyway...)

• (Astral) Magic: As the name blatantly tells, it is the most basic and widespread form of magic. It involves contacting, bargaining with, and making contracts with spirits of objects, phenomena, mythical images, and raw concepts (in that order of increasing strength), who reside in the Astral World. (In other words, animism) The spirits provide a sort of insulation to the mage who practices magic when they spiritually delve in to Phantasm, which is the collective sum of all existence that is immaterial, including the entire Astral World itself. Also, the spirit aids in ripping apart the border between Reality and Phantasm and letting Phantasm leak into Reality, which is where the supernatural effect comes from. However, magic is limited in that the spirits themselves can only access parts of Phantasm that they are associated with. Also, spirits demand Essence, both as their own food and fuel to manifest Phantasm.
• Theurgy: This form of 'magic' is associated with shamanism. The shaman contacts specters, which are basically Hun and Po of dead people that have been rearranged into a whole new entity. Specters are divided into gods and demons, based on their nature. The specter enters the shaman's body, and directly manifests Phantasm with its own power and authority, the shaman's body being merely an anchor or a shell for the specter. Theurgy still consumes Essence, but the raw cost is cheaper than Magic. (If you can stand having someone speak inside your head and trying to control you, that is)
• Thaumaturgy: Not neccessarily evil, but still qualifies as insanely dangerous stuff; don't let the literal traslation of 'wonderworking' fool you. The thaumaturge surrounds himself/herself with a Shell made of his/her own desires, wishes, lusts, anguish, and stuff like that. (Taking a cue from Buddhism here) The Shell serves the same function of the spirits involved in Astral Magic. And since the Shell is made up of desires, Thaumaturgy can potentially grant anything that the user wants. Of course, surrounding yourself with something that 'toxic' tends to drive the user insane. If not, the Shell may transform into a devil that will try to kill the thaumaturge.
• Witchcraft: Harnessing stories, cliches, and tropes. When a witch mumbles some incomprehensible stuff while putting a toad or something inside a big cauldron, something will happen because fairy tales say that it will. This is the least understood form of 'magic' in my setting; no one, not even the witches, know how it works other than that it does. It even doesn't consume Essence like all types of 'magic' does, even though it comes from Phantasm. Specifically, it comes from Faerie and its ridiculously large number of inhabitants. The fae might know something, but they aren't telling...
  
  Lastly, there's what I lumped in as the Arcane arts, which includes stuff like Hermetic alchemy and 'Qi'-based powers from Wuxia, but I don't consider them 'magic' in my setting because they are not from Phantasm, and work more like both exotic science andenlightenment. So I'll just skip them for now XD

edited 26th Jan '13 4:52:36 AM by Ninth

IGNORE THIS

edited 11th Sep '14 12:49:24 PM by Eagal

It's a kind of Sufficiently Analyzed Magic, out of which many magical schools have sprouted, I will mention the basics of the system along with the most common magic schools found in my world.

There is a kind of particle, let's call it anima, that is invisible to all non-divine creatures, this particle makes up souls and is present almost everywhere. When anima moves or flows it affects the physical world. Anima has different states and each state affects the physical world differently. People, using their souls, can affect these states of anima and alter it's flow, effectively changing the physical world without actually moving. That's the principle behind most magic schools, some use souls other than their own, such as herbalism that uses the souls of plants to cast magic, some use natural occurring magical currents.

Elemental control: it is the most common school of magic, most people learn it at a young age without any help, others need some teachings to get it right. It consists on using one's own soul to control the nearby elements and it requires three things called the three principles: will, understanding and energy. Will and energy come naturally, understanding needs to be learnt differently for each different element.

Animation: It consists on building or finding a soul and binding it to an artificial body to give it life, it's a dangerous practice as it may consume all your energy and kill you in the process.

Herbalism: consists on mixing herbs with unique properties within their souls to make beverages and potions with different effects ranging from curing diseases to making someone stronger to extending life.

There are many other schools, some very mysterious, such as titanic magic, others not so much, such as alchemy.

Setting one

Magic is a shortcut used to cheat the laws of the universe by beings who have to adjust to many different space-times on a constant basis and the ever changing laws of physics as they do so. Using magic instead of relying on natural growth, rigorous study and hard work is discouraged because more stable beings not adapted to live in different kinds of space-time may imitate it. Magic is risky even to those who exist in state where they can understand it, something like a carbon based life form attempting to use magic will never workout well unless a celestial being with serious know how babies them through the process.

Setting two

"Magic" is a term that includes various abilities developed over long periods of time both through experimentation and natural evolution. Exactly what qualifies as magic and what does not varies from culture to culture.

Magic is what happens when the laws of the universe get lazy.

Magic is treated in a very, very, very scientific manner. It is studied, classified, has equations, its own laws, and so on. It is only useable by a Witch Species, which cannot interbreed with humans.

At the heart of the is the concept of sera'en (singular serah). Similar to qualia, sera'en are the "ness" of something. For example, red has the serah of redness. Magic is done by manipulating sera'en. A mage could protect himself from the heat of a raging fire by making the sera'en flow around him. Mages can sense sera'en in a sixth sense, a form of ESP. This sense is not very refined compared to, say, vision, and has a rather limited range, but it extends completely around the mage.

Transfiguration is a particularly unique brand of magic, essentially its quantum gravity. It is done by overlaying the natural sera'en of something with the sera'en you want to turn it into. You turn a human into a wolf by overlaying the humanness with wolfiness. Unlike most other aspects of magic, very little is understood about transfiguration besides "it works"; it has almost no constant laws, aside from difficulty increasing with the complexity of the transfigured objects, and is very touchy. Because of the overlaying, while it is very difficult to turn something into something else, it is incredibly easy to restore one's true shape.

Although magic seems at times like it should follow the laws of physics, and what it does can sometimes be explained in physical terms, a close examination will show all the ways magic bends or breaks those laws. Suppose you toss a ball through a window without breaking either and readings show that it happened because of macroscopic quantum tunneling. All the equations and data in the world won't change the fact that quantum tunneling doesn't work that way.

The magic in my setting is divided into four types:

• Magic: The only of these actually referred to as "magic" in universe, it is the forces of Creation and Destruction, of either mass or energy. Anyone born with the innate ability to use it are called Mages
• Enchantry: The skill of forcing a magical effect onto an object.
• Alchemy: The forces of change, of either mass or energy. Anyone born with the innate ability to use it are called Alchemists or less commonly, Transmutes
• Blacksmithy: In my setting, i decided to make blacksmithy its own unique magic to explain why people don't just summon weapons and armor with magic, or alchemise them out of rocks or something. Anything forged in my setting automatically has the most useful qualities imbued on it, like sharpness on a blade, or strength on a piece of plate armor. As compared to any thing created with magic or alchemy which, unless made by someone who has completely mastered either, will be extremely dull and brittle.

Each magic type can be inherited from a bloodline, and those with all 4 bloodlines in their ancestry are rare, as they often, for one reason or another, die before continuing their bloodline or are completely infertile.

Alchemists, Mages, and non-human races were, in the past, hunted to near extinction by humans with no innate magic, except in a country where the alchemists and other races retreated and walled themselves off, and the mages retreated to their city-states and erected magic barriers. Non-magic humans have since colonized most of the rest of the world, and after forgetting the other races and magics, alchemist and mage bloodlines have become common again, but as there are none left who can train them, they both lie dormant, waiting for awakening.

edited 13th Feb '13 10:31:36 PM by andrewmcmann

How should I interpret the fact that in the last four pages, someone has commented on someone else's post precisely twice?

Magic concerns the manipulation of a substance known as "Mana" in order to create certain effects. In essence, the mage is using mana as an intermediary in order to apply energy and there are very few limits on how this energy can be applied. It still obeys conservation of energy so the caster is either limited by the energy available in his or her body or needs an external source of power but the precision of the application of energy is limited by the discipline of the caster.

Well, that's the short version. The long version is that manipulation of mana is inherent to all thinking beings but people tend to internalize the casting. Which is good for enhancing muscles but bad if you want to light a candle. The mortal mind has an instinctive lock on mana manipulation to keep people from setting themselves on fire or causing blood clots in inconvenient places. It takes years to remove these limits and most of that is sitting around meditating. Energy use is usually limited to whatever the caster has on hand but it's, with some time and preperation, possible to gather energy from the surroundings. The actual application of energy is limited by how much the caster can focus energy when most forms of energy tend to diffuse. The caster also needs to know enough about the forces involved to visualize how her energy will be applied. Thinking beings instinctively dampen mana effects on their body but this protection isn't foolproof and doesn't do anything to purely physical phenomenon. It's also possible to compress mana inside a crystal or ceramic much like air in a tank. This is often used by war mages to empower spells in a hurry.

Let's start with reality. It isn't real. It's all a simulation propagated by bored post-singularity entities who are in turn inside a simulation. It's turtles all the way down, and all the way up. Anyhow, there's one glitch that no one can seem to fix. It gives players the ability to view and modify a universe's source code. Modifying too much would generate bugs that could trigger a domino effect that usually leads to reality crashing.

That's why every universe has a cosmic troubleshooter that keeps things running smoothly. One of its many jobs is to rework the laws of physics to accept a little bit of modding and keep its full potential sealed away. This involves studying the belief system of whatever civilization is modding reality at the time and retconning the laws of physics based on that belief system. This means any system of magic could exist. However, there are people who have learned the truth. The troubleshooters have no power over those who know the truth. Thus, they can access and modify reality's source code directly. Can you guess what these people are called? Sourcerers.

edited 30th Aug '14 8:04:15 PM by MaxwellDaring

My systems keep changing, but here's what I'm working with now:

A sorcerer sells his soul to an elf for preternatural items such as reptilian telepathy necklaces. The elf is summoned by burning certain herbs; the elf will not attack a sorcerer as long as he remains in the protective circle.

Magic arises from two underlying phenomena: the "Power", which is a kind of supernatural energy, and the "Knowledge", which is knowledge of the world's inner workings and where to apply "Power".

The Power just is. It was there long before the world was created or even the gods appeared. It was concentrated in the Eldritch Abominations that dwelled in the void before creation. The gods came, killed one such abomination (known as the Aspidochelon) and used it as building material to create the world of Terra Firma. Thus Aspidochelon's Power became available to the gods and, ultimately, to the mortals that came afterwards.

The Knowledge had it beginning in Tanara, the Goddess of Knowledge. She was unique among the gods in that she knew past, present and future, and recorded it all in an eldritch book called the Book of Being. The rest of the gods used this book as a manual for constructing Terra Firma from Aspidochelon's remains. Thus, the gods were the first beings who used Power directed by Knowledge, that is, the first mages.

Afterwards, the elves came into being, and the gods were teaching them. Among others, Tanara taught the Elves to read and write, using the Book of Being as a primer. The first few test subjects had their heads asplode, but later several Elves succeeded in reading the Book of Being and living to tell the tale; they became the first mages as we know them.

After that, many ages passed, humans came into being, and many wars between good and evil gods happened. After the evil god Demogorgon was cast down, the elves and humans had two great wizards: humans had Hermeas the Battle-Mage, the first Emperor of Ruritania, and elves had Mithgol the Grey, one of the three Keepers of the Grey Elven nation. These two friends codified magic, created the magical alphabet and sigil system that is called Hermetic by humans and Mithgolian by elves.

Well there are 3 major types of magic in my story, "Shu Ru" and maybe later I might put down the different "schools or styles" for each if it's not too long.

For all, mana is the energy needed to do magic, the fuel or magic power/points and taken from the energy in the atmosphere and subdued via willpower and techniques – in other words, it is energy from outside the practitioner. This means that Mana itself has more or less an infinite source, but the practitioner cannot preserve any Mana if he exhausts his own willpower. In this state, the practitioner can be said to be out of Mana.

In Mundane/Naturalmagic, the practitioner’s spirit resonates with ambient electromagnetic field of the earth and eventually the more energetic fields beyond the atmosphere.This brings the amount of energy the person can obtain with their mana capacity from the far reaches of space, to within their general area, instantaneously. The influx of energy ionizes the air at a rate that generates a room-temperature plasma (35-40oC). This plasma is an ionized gas that naturally takes up space and can be cultivated for varying amounts and densities depending on how much mana is used in one setting. This is a magic is a natural defense mechanism that any human has the potential to learn, although at this point in the story, most don't know/control it.

In Arcane magic, mana is specifically The universal energy of existence present in all matter and energy, mainly undetected by most earth-based technology. It is a by-product of the creation of the universe as an invisible force that is generated and surrounds all places and things. (Though it is visible when concentrated or processed into spells). It affects the caster’s world mainly by bending the current physical laws like the traditional idea of magic. The major limit is that Users are limited to defying the laws of physics, and cannot rewrite or manipulate universes themselves, save for artificially created pocket dimensions. (Gravity still pulls down, even if it takes a really long time to do so. Unless gravity in a confined area is reversed, then vice-versa.)Used by Jinni,Faye,Kami,Merfolk,Dragons,Pheonix.

Divine is my least developed magic type, only used by angels and such higher beings. No known limitations except that it can also be cancelled by anti-magic like the others. Can be channeled into mortal (non-angelic) beings if allowed by user. Also notable for being the only magic that can truly conjure objects out of empty space. It's overpowered but angels barely show up so far in the story.

I made up a world where magic is based on the manipulation of an elementary particle called a materion, present in all objects and in the air around everything. One can manipulate reality in a limited way by arranging the materions around an object into an appropriate vessel for the spell via an effort of will, then manipulating reality within that "circuit" to produce the desired result.

For example, a simple "fireball" spell involves creating a circular materion formation and then altering the oxygen within that circle to ignite it, then creating a materion circuit to push it forward, hurling it towards the enemy. And even that spell alone has thousands of permutations: the color and intensity of the flames, the size, the shape (transforming a fireball into a spear of flame), even the number of fireballs launched at one time.

The soul itself is made up of a core of highly dense materions that form a suitable framework for sentient consciousness. Death releases of these materions. Where these materions go is unknown: some theorize that they return to a “Source”, called the “Aion Teleios”, while others theorize that materions from dead people scatter into the air. Neither theory has sufficient proof to be considered truth, although both have their supporters and detractors.

There are several types of magic in the world, and though all of them are equally correct (in that the basis for how it works is the manipulation of materions), they differ in means and ideologies.

Transmutation: Using materion manipulation, one can change the physical properties of a material. Unlike Fullmetal Alchemist, human transmutation is allowed in a limited form for medicine, allowing for surgery and other medical procedures to be completed faster and more efficiently (by using transmutation to close wounds by drawing flesh together).

Runecasting: Using symbols brought by the descendants of the long-dead High Vasdari race, materions can be made to arrange themselves in a certain pattern. Tracing the rune on a piece of solid material (usually crystal or some materion-conductive metal as copper) allows the effects of the spell to be longer-lasting. Runes are often used as a crucial component of Magitek, where multiple runes are carved to create, say, a combustion engine using a fire spell.

Logomancy: Logomancy, or “sorcery” in layman’s terms, is a more traditional form of magic, using "magic words" to accomplish the arrangement of materions. The "magic words" are but mantras specifically created to focus the mind on the act of visualizing the materion patterns one wishes to create.

Elementalism: The manipulation of the elements is the focus of elementalism, and it consists of guiding the materion flow in those elements towards the direction you want them to go. There are different schools of elementalism, each with its own classifications ranging from the traditional fire-earth-water-air axis to more sophisticated models.

Arcanistry: Arcanistry focuses on identifying how the systems of magic work at their base level. To borrow a description from Ragnarok Online, other magic schools talk of "how to cast a fireball spell"; arcanistry talks of "how a fireball spell is cast". By understanding the base principles of materion manipulation, they are able to control how spells work, making their effects last longer or shorter or even stopping them from working altogether.

Oh, and spoilers: the materions are really the remains of the High Vasdari race after their "rule over the planet and our human slaves as totalitarian god-kings" failed when some of their group, who'd grown to love humanity (platonically and carnally) sabotaged their plans by uplifting mankind and blowing up their doomsday device. So essentially, magic in this world is drawing on the reality-warping powers of dead Precursor dust.

edited 2nd Apr '13 10:53:09 PM by Icarael

In Alesia, arcane energy is the result of a fifth fundamental force of the universe. (The others are strong force, weak force, magnetism, and gravity) Arcane energy will preform different functions depending on the frequency. If the frequency of the energy matches the resonating frequency of a particle, then it will charge the particle with arcane energy. Once the particle is charged, the wavelength can be changed to apply various effects. For instance, one could charge the cells around a wound, then proceed to accelerate their function and substitute the materials they need to repair the damage with particles gathered from the environment around it.

When ATP is charged, it acts like a battery for more arcane energy. This charged ATP is known as Mana. When arcane energy is drawn from the ATP, it will convert itself into arcane energy. Thus, a 'mancer will feel tired after prolonged use of magic. ATP can be restored at an accelerated pace if some other source of energy is used to build up arcane energy and replenish ATP. Of course, large sections of the 'mancer's nervous system has to be charged in order to use arcane energy.

However, none of this comes free with your Happy Meal. One must learn what frequency to use on a particle and what wavelengths do what to which charged particle. The Higgs Boson, which dictates mass, and thus gravity and time dilation, is the most difficult particle to charge. Charged particles are also able to be programmed to emit and change wavelength with the proper materials and skill. This was called enchanting back in the good old days. One could create anything from a flaming sword, to a particle beam weapon, to a demonically possessed nuclear reactor.

Arcane energy comes from points in space where massive quantities of energy were focused on a single point, causing severe disruptions in the virtual particles in space. Arcane energy then flows out of this point, which is kept open by exotic matter which becomes attracted to these points. These points have the ability to attract arcane energy of a certain frequency, with each point having a different frequency attraction. Since the energy comes out at a random frequency, it will travel towards another point where the attraction is. These form ley lines.

One strange thing about these points is that they appear to be geosynchronized with the planet. There seems to be no reason for this to happen because it would logically be locked onto the point-set topology of the universe. One of the more sustainable theories is that a concentration of uniquely charged minerals located in the mantle keep the points locked.

.....And that's more than a few sentences.

edited 2nd Apr '13 9:50:25 PM by MaxwellDaring

Yup. My magic system is using science as a top hat.

Magic is a kind of phlebotinum that can change into anything, but it requires precision and a formula for each spell. Only people armed with a certain mark can understand the fundamentals and invent new spells without fucking up royally.

My magic system is simple: Some people are born with the ability to use magic, which can be determined by a sort of scan that a magician can do. Others are not born with this ability.

X

So your magic system is one of recursion?

It does raise an interesting question of if it takes a magician to make a magician, where did the first magician come from?

This post has been blanked upon request.

edited 20th Dec '13 3:47:36 PM by BestOf

There are two basic types of magic: Enchantment and Mediacy. Enchantment uses the power of the magician’s mind to affect change on biomass (Physiologic Enchantment) or other minds (Oracular Enchantment), while Mediacy is the act of communing with spirits for aid, usually requiring some sacrifice of biomass to the spirit as either a bargaining chip or to enable it to interact with the physical world. Magicians will commonly specialize in either Physiologic or Oracular magic, as once you've learned to see and communicate with spirits you've basically mastered Mediacy, and all that's left to do is hone your negotiation skills and stock up on sacrifice material (a small vial of blood or fruit juice will more than suffice for most day to day purposes).

Okay, so I fleshed mine out some more. Certain creatures, Sirens, Merfolk, the Phoneix, Sprites and the Minotaur, to be exact, carry magic in their blood. Literally. The easiest and most common way to gain (temporary) magical powers is to ingest the blood of one of these creatures. For permanent magical powers, you need to be a halfblood, born of a human and one of these creatures (Which for... Obvious reasons, some are kinda impossible to make halfbloods with.). The catch is that any halfbloods are sterile as a mule, so magical abilities literally only get passed down one generation before you have to 'birds and bees' it again to get more wizards.

edited 15th Apr '13 8:02:31 AM by PrinceofSavoy